Ruthless People (24 page)

I couldn’t wait for camp.

SEVENTEEN

“Murder, like talent,
seems occasionally to run in families.”

~ George Henry

MELODY

“They’re excited,” Sedric replied as we all stood in front of the jets, which were
fueled to take us straight to Cascadia. The men were all beside themselves as they
grabbed their gear and walked onto the planes. Those who weren’t flying with us had
driven, leaving late last night with Monte so they could be there by the time we landed.

“How could any place named Candia be exciting?” Olivia frowned, her hands across her
chest as if she were a child. It was kind of funny. I didn’t know Barbie’s could bend
their arms.

“Cascadia,” Coraline corrected while Adriana stood beside her. I was curious to see
what would happen in the week I was gone.

“Whatever, my point is the same.” Olivia rolled her eyes.

Evelyn smiled, clapping her hands. “Well, I’m excited for you boys. I always wanted
to send you all to camp. Take pictures!”

“Honestly, mother, it’s not that type of camp.” Liam smirked, kissing her on the cheek
before grabbing his bag.

“Actually it is,” I replied, as Fedel handed me my new smartphone. “I’m simply going
as a chaperone to make sure they don’t lose complete control.”

“A chaperone?” Declan smirked. “What do you think will happen?”

Turning to Fedel, I raised my eyebrows. He was trying really hard not to smile and
even coughed.

“Well don’t be shy,” I told him.

“Last year, some of the knife nuts captured five or six skunks and placed them in
the sniper cabins,” he snickered quickly before returning solemn.

“And?”

He dropped his head down. “And then the snipers covered their cabins in honey and
fire ants.”

“Then the hackers were hacked and their computers were filled with gay porn. They
also replaced their normal mice with dildo shaped ones. The hackers then gave them
laxatives. Which lead to the things I do not even want to begin to explain. If I hadn’t
stepped in, one of them probably would have died,” I said as I checked my messages.
Looking up, I saw Evelyn’s red face still processing everything she just heard.

“Holy Jesus fuck, what’s on the menu this year?” Neal asked, wide-eyed. I could see
the excitement building in his eyes.

Fedel grinned. “You Irish better watch your backs.”

“
Non vedo l'ora di prendere questi cani verso il basso.
” Antonio laughed alongside Fedel.

Declan stepped forward. “If you’re going to trash talk us, do it in English or Irish
so everyone can hear or
beidh mé briseadh do liathróidí.
”

“Just in case you don’t know, he said he will break your balls.” Neal laughed.

Antonio held up his hands, not even least bit afraid. “You Irish and your balls. All
I said is I can’t wait.”

“Enough,” Liam snapped at them.

A whole week of this . . . how fun.

Sedric looked desperate, and I would be, too, if I had to spend time with the women.
“Mel, are you—”

“No, Sedric,” Evelyn and I said at the same time. She looked at me and grinned as
if we had an alliance.

“This sounds so stupid,” Olivia declared with her nose so high a bird could nest in
it. “Neal—”

“Neal works for me . . .
us
,” I said as Liam glared at me. “This is part of the job. Don’t like it, too bad.
But if you’re really worried, I will personally make sure he doesn’t become someone’s
butt pirate.”

Their jaws dropped, and Liam opened his mouth but closed it quickly, chuckling to
himself. Smiling, I glanced once more at Adriana before turning toward the plane.
In an hour, we would be at camp and I wouldn’t have to deal with being a Callahan
for a week.

The moment I stepped onto the plane, they all stopped speaking and looked at me.

“Continue.” I didn’t have anything to say to them. Sitting down, I noticed Eric had
a leg brace on. He met my gaze, and I simply grinned, forcing him to look away.

Fedel walked up to me—not sitting, seeing as how he had lost that right—with a file
I hadn’t seen before. I almost wanted to smile at him. Information was the key to
my good graces.

“Yes, Fedel?” I asked as Nelson, the stuttering fool, handed me a glass of wine before
going to serve the rest of the plane.

“I know you don’t like apologies—”

“And yet here you are wasting words, Fedel.”

He nodded. “I have kept watch on Vance and found something, but I haven’t been able
to confirm it yet.”

I hated unconfirmed information because it often led to dead ends. However, he knew
that, so whatever it was had to big enough for us to pay attention to whether it was
true or not. Glancing around the plane, I only saw Neal.

“Wait until Liam takes a seat, and then join us,” I replied. I watched as shock flashed
through his eyes before he nodded.

He wouldn’t have to wait long seeing as how a second later, Liam stepped onboard with
Declan right behind him. Liam looked almost annoyed when he looked at me, and it was
ticking me off. I wanted to shoot him in the fucking face, the emotional bitching
bastard. I hadn’t done anything. He wanted to be Mr. Cold and act like a dick then
I would let him. The cabin went silent again for him.

“If anyone plays a prank on me, I will cut your hand off and make you eat it. Feel
free to spread that around, because I’m not joking.” He didn’t even have to state
it. The amount of poison and ice in his voice promised more than the loss of a hand.

They all nodded before continuing to speak among themselves. Liam walked back to where
I was, stopping to stare—glare—at Fedel.

“Didn’t you fire him?” he asked me.

“Leaders don’t fire people. It sets a bad precedent.” I smirked. “Instead, we kill
them.”

In that moment, I saw his lips twitch up into a smile before it was gone again. He
nodded, placing his bag in the overhead compartment before sitting down.

“Why isn’t he dead then?” he asked, pulling out the brandy from his coat pocket. He
was such a drunk.

“He may have information on Vance,” I replied, taking a drink of my wine. Liam glanced
up, waiting for Fedel to speak, but before he could, Jinx started the jet.

“Well sit down, Fedel,” Liam stated.

He was more than happy to, and I respected that he was working hard to make sure I
didn’t ever have to put him in his place again.

“You said he might have something?” Liam asked, and Fedel pulled out what looked to
be letters in code and some in Russian.

“I haven’t been able to decrypt them all,” Fedel replied quickly. “However, from what
I can tell, this is Vance’s Step Two.”

“You skipped a step?” I asked, picking up the papers.

“It wasn’t clear until now. Step One was getting started with Alexei Rozhkov,” Fedel
replied, pulling out the photo of the old Russian mob boss with a scar across his
neck. Some brave soul had snuck into his bedroom and slit his throat but the bastard
still lived.

He was one of the most powerful men, alongside Orlando and Sedric.
Was
being the key word.

“Did your people kill him?” I looked to Liam.

Liam shook his head. “Father had been hacking away at him for years. Then when Declan
stole the rest of his fortune, the man was basically crippled. He couldn’t afford
the high quality smack anymore. No junky would even blink at his shit. His men left
him, he lost his houses, friends, everything, and my father wanted to kill him, but
I thought it would best to make him live in the slums he created. All he had was some
precious fourteen-million dollar red diamond, which I thought was just a rumor until
we heard someone stole it.”

Fedel looked at me, snickering as I just drank my sweet red wine. The whole cabin
became silent as Liam and his men’s eyes slowly fell on me. My people boasted with
pride, but Liam stared at me in shock.

What the fuck were they shocked for? As if stealing a rock was the worst thing I had
ever
done.

“You stole it,” Declan said, slowly rolling it around his tongue, and Neal looked
jealous.

“I needed a new coaster?” I replied. It wasn’t a big deal to me. Liam didn’t speak,
he simply leaned back into his chair and frowned out the window.

“How old were you?” Neal asked, leaning back as well, as if I was about to give him
a fucking bedtime story.

“It was the weekend before my eighteenth birthday. I wanted to get myself something
nice, pretty, and shiny. So I did a little digging, found his not-so-secret safe house
in northern Russia, and thought why not? I haven’t pissed off any Russians yet, and
stole it.” It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but I did it.

“She was in and out in eight minutes,” Fedel added. “Three minutes to break in, two
minutes to kill two of his men, a minute and nineteen seconds to grab the jewel, and
then forty-two seconds to get out.”

“What happened to the last minute and forty-one seconds?” Declan asked, but his mind
seemed to be racing.

“The last minute and forty-one seconds to send the house up in flames,” Jinx added
over the intercom, making me smile.

Jinx didn’t often show his face—he preferred to keep hidden from everyone—but that
didn’t mean he wasn’t always listening. Plus, he would know. He was the one who picked
me up.

LIAM

Are you fucking kidding me! Seriously! At seventeen, I was a sophomore in college
still trying to get rid of my acne and my awkward bullshit, while she was blowing
up houses and stealing a rare jewel in the bloody motherland.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I turned to Fedel. “What does this have to do with
Vance?”

The idiot was so busy getting high off his past memories he almost forgot why we were
talking about this.

Declan pulled out a photo of a red-haired woman. “Meet the woman formerly known as
Saige Rozhkov.”

“He had a daughter?” I replied but the closer I stared, the more I saw the resemblance.

“Formerly?” Mel asked him as she glared at the redheaded woman in the photo.

“By the end of tonight, she will be Saige Valero,” he replied, and both Mel and I
put our drinks down.

“What the fuck?” Mel and I said together.

“From what I’ve learned, the man who slit old Rozhkov’s throat was Vance when he was
on his rise to power. He wanted Saige to marry Amory. However, the old man wouldn’t
have it. That’s when he went to Orlando, but he was rejected again. So Vance took
a step back, and I guess allowed both your families to destroy Rozhkov. But since
you let him live, Vance went back and killed him, but not before torturing every last
secret out of him. Even though Alexei was destroyed, he still had the names. As both
of you know, old names come with old favors. He pulled every last one of them after
the fall of Rozhkov,” Fedel explained quickly as he looked through more papers.

“Then why does he need this Saige?” I asked. He had the power already. The girl seemed
to be useless.

“Because they’re foreigners,” Mel whispered, and I could see her connecting the dots
in her mind. “Vance and his brothers came from Italy where my father all but banished
them. The Russians hate outsiders. This Saige is a pawn. Something to make his men
stand straighter behind him.”

Made sense.
“Does she know?”

He nodded and frowned. “She’s the one who sold out her father’s location to Vance.
She apparently misses the power—these encrypted letters are hers. I thought they were
ranting’s of a mad woman at first—”

“Today
is the day
,”
I read the letter aloud, which had the worst grammar, even in Russian. “Today
is the
day I take my rightful place on the throne. My father was fool and lost everything.
He didn’t know how to play the game. But I do. I have spent years planning my revenge
and now with the power of the Amory. With the power of the Valero, I shall be queen.
I will cover the earth with the blood of my enemies. Starting with Irish Cunt and
Italian whore.

“And this is why we do not keep journals. It’s dated for today,” I added as I handed
it to her. I knew she couldn’t read it, but she looked ready to rip it from my hands.

“So she’s batshit crazy. Give me a location and I will kill her now whether it’s true
or not.” Mel’s eyes narrowed in on the paper. If she wasn’t careful, she would set
it on fire.

Fedel frowned. “I don’t have one. These letters were taken from her personal tablet.
However, they are bouncing from eight different countries. We see everything she types
but have no idea where she is.”

“What makes you think this is real? She cannot honestly be stupid enough to be writing
her innermost thoughts and plans,” I asked him. He said he hadn’t verified it yet,
and despite how true it may have seemed, it could have been a lie.

“As requested, a notice was put out about the death of Orlando. Because of that, Amory
went back to Russia. However, it wasn’t just him who came home—all the Valero did.
Most of them spread out through Moscow. But all within walking distance to the Black
Hotel where there is no one else staying but a Mrs. S.,” Fedel explained, and all
I wanted to do was bash his head in. The downside to ruling an empire was the lack
of fucking vacation days. I was looking forward to this camp.